It was awful to behold.
The bitch fought to save her pups with a terrifying brutality, and the battle was soon over. The scruffy newcomer tucked tail and ran back into the night. The victor padded casually back to her pups, blood-shot eyes glaring at us, chest heaving—and flanks bleeding.
“Damn!” Bianca repeated, stunned.
I started laughing.
Bianca stared at me with wide eyes. Her expression made me laugh even more. I couldn’t help it.
“What’s with you, man?” she asked, eyeing me with perhaps more concern than even the bitch.
“Before I came to Romania,” I explained, “I got all my shots except one: rabies. What are the odds? In my thirty years of life, I’ve never even seen a rabid dog. Yet on day one, here I am, cornered on a stormy mountaintop by an angry, rabid bitch. I mean really, what are the odds of this?”
“You think this is funny? You sick, papa!”
I just kept laughing, and pointed to the funicular—or, rather, where it had previously been. The last tram had descended for the night.
“The rasclat left us!” Bianca cried angrily. She stomped her feet in outrage for a while before finally shrugging her shoulders in defeat. She explained lamely, “Romanian-style.”
I laughed even harder, barely able to speak between gasps for air. “Thanks for this wonderful tour! And to think I blew off my mother’s fears that a trip to Romania would leave me stranded and exhausted... in the cold, wet wilderness... surrounded by dangerous animals... in the dark.”
Bianca did not think it was funny at all.
“It could be worse,” I added. “At least it stopped raining.”
Of course, the downpour commenced almost instantly.
“Hey, American rau,” Bianca said bitterly. “Shut up! You want suggest aliens come down and take us next?”
“Ham ham,” I laughed quietly, earning an elbow in the ribs.
But then Bianca, too, began laughing—almost hysterically, in fact.
“What?” I asked, bewildered by her sudden lightening of mood.
“Check, babaloo,” she said, pointing to the scraps the cook had thrown to the dogs. “It’s ham!”
2
We eventually passed the angry—and now potentially rabid—bitch after the rain had cooled her temper. When we felt the moment was right, we eased slowly but confidently past her, making our path obvious and as far away from her pups as possible.
While squinting to follow the long, dark mountain trail, the entombing forest blocked the rain. Alas, the water made it through by collecting on leaves and forming heavy drops that smacked our umbrella with tremendous force. With miles to go, and already exhausted, we got a little crazy. We couldn’t stop saying ‘ham ham’ and laughing. Had anyone been around to see us, they would have thought we were nuts—or, since this was Transylvania, possibly mad scientists.
“Tell me a story,” Bianca said. “Something adventurous. Or about your marriage.”
“The greatest adventure of them all,” I commented dryly. “Don’t get me started.”
“We have a long walk,” she pointed out.
“Well,” I began, readying for the tale. “The story of how my ex-wife and I left Iowa is trippy. When we were twenty-five, my girlfriend and I both wanted to leave—we weren’t married then—so Jen got a job as a chef at a Colorado ski resort. I had just graduated from college, but figured I would be a waiter until we figured things out. We loaded up her car, grabbed the cat, and drove out west. But when we got there, we absolutely hated the place. There was only the one restaurant for an hour’s drive in every direction, and four ranches. There was no chance of us making it there, and no way in hell we were moving back to Iowa.”
“What did you do?”
“We kept driving west,” I answered. “We decided to just go until we found something we liked, or our money ran out. Living off my credit cards, we went all the way to the west coast and up and down California, looking for a fit. Unfortunately, everything in Cal was too expensive for us, so we ended up in Reno, Nevada. We were nearly broke and my credit cards were maxed. It was over 110 degrees and our only home was a metal car in the sun. I thought the poor cat was going to die, man.
“I drove us around town until I found a suitable neighborhood: not too good and not too bad. I approached the manager and told him, ‘We have no money here, but plenty back home. I want to leave my girlfriend and our cat here—starting right now—for one week free. I will return to Iowa to get the rest of my money. If I don’t return in seven days with all of next month’s rent on top of this week’s, you can throw my girlfriend and cat out onto the street.’”
Bianca laughed, and asked, “He no buy that Gypsy crap, did he?”
“He did. He said I looked just smart enough—and stupid enough—to be believable. We were obviously middle class and, to be honest, were his only white tenants, which I think influenced his decision. So I left Jen with the car to look for a job, and gave her the last of our cash. I kept twenty dollars only and took the train—yes, the train—across the country to Iowa. It took two and a half days, but I made it. I spent another day and a half in Iowa fattening up and gathering my stuff, then hopped in my car to go ‘rescue’ Jen. That led to one of the worst experiences of my life.
“You see, it takes thirty-two hours to drive from Cedar Rapids to Reno. Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn in there somewhere and added to the distance. I was really, really worried about Jen being left alone in that strange and none-too-safe neighborhood, and I had to get my ass back there and pay. She had almost no money for food and just barely enough for gas to drive around looking for a job. She had no phone to communicate with, which is why I didn’t wire the money. She had no one to turn to at all. I hauled ass and drove straight through, hyped up on coffee. But my timing was off—dangerously off.
“Because of my wrong turn, I ended up entering Nevada on Highway 50. This, I discovered, was called the Loneliest Road in America. They weren’t kidding! I was crossing mountains, which are hell on gas mileage...”
“Wait,” Bianca interrupted. “Hell on what?”
“Gas mileage. You know, miles...?”
“Oh, da, da, of course. Please continue.”
“After crossing the deserts of western Colorado and crossing all of Utah, I was running low on gas. I had never seen such vast distances without a gas station: it was crazy. I finally crossed into Nevada and reached a little mountain town at 9:05 p.m. I pulled into the only gas station just as they were closing up—or, rather, as he was closing up. There was only one guy, and only two pumps.”
“Of course there was only he,” Bianca interrupted again. “How many Americans it take to pump gas?”
“You haven’t spent much time in America, have you?” I replied. “Most gas stations are big: dozens of pumps, big store, and all that.”
“Anyway,” I continued. “These were the old-fashioned kind of gas pumps, where you have to go inside to pay for gas. No credit cards or anything. He wouldn’t let me have any gas because he had just closed up the cash register for the night. Can you believe that?
“So I had to keep driving. And driving. And driving. I was driving on fumes, man, and hadn’t seen any cities at all. I passed one little town with a population of like twenty or something, but that was all dark and closed. I went up and down I don’t know how many mountain ranges. Turns out Nevada is the most mountainous state in America, other than Alaska. I was less than five minutes from being stranded alone in the middle of the desert at midnight. If that happened I would survive, but I would have no chance of saving Jen from being kicked out on the street.
“Until!” I boomed, getting all melodramatic. “Until I saw a light ahead. A dirt road crossed this so-called ‘highway,’ marked by a single street lamp. Lo and behold, there was a single, dusty gas pump—in the dirt parking lot of a bar, of all things. I pulled up to the pump and parked. Even though it was dark, I intended to remain right there all damn night if need be.
�
�That bar was something else,” I continued. “It was small, of course, and very rustic. The two bathrooms were differentiated by stolen highway signs—filled with bullet holes—indicating ‘cow crossing’ for the ladies and ‘open range’ for the men. At the bar were three men with the longest beards I had ever seen in my life. I still don’t recall which was dirtier: them or their clothes. They looked just like Old West mining prospectors. The way they shot whiskey implied they were getting home by burro rather than car.
“‘I need gas,’ I said to the bartender. He looked just like the miners, by the way. He replied, ‘Sure, after you buy a couple of beers or three.’ I had been driving under extreme stress over Jen for about twenty-two hours straight at this point, and said as much. But he wouldn’t turn on the gas pump until I bought a beer. So I did. The conversation was... interesting. These were men who had avoided civilization their entire lives. They referred to a town of 300 people as ‘the big city.’ It was bizarre.”
“So you had a beer?” Bianca said. “When your woman was waiting for you, you sat and had a beer?”
“What else could I do?” I defended lightly, “I didn’t drink it, because I would have passed out from exhaustion. On TV was the news, something about a woman running for governor or something like that. The bartender made his disgust at that turn of events very clear. I won’t repeat what he said, but it nearly made me blush—no small feat. Then the patrons answered in kind, right down the line, until the guy beside me agreed by angrily spitting his chewing tobacco on the floor. Then all four stopped and stared at me, waiting.
“Now, I needed to get back to Reno,” I clarified. “Which meant I needed to get gas. I played the part expected of me. I slammed my beer on the bar and said with great emphasis, ‘God damn it! I was planning on moving to Nevada, but I won’t until that bitch gets her fat ass back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant!’”
“‘By God, son!’ cried the bartender. ‘Let’s get that pump turned on straight away. We need more men like you here.’”
“So gas I got, and I pulled into Reno about 3:30 a.m. The next morning I was due to pay up, so it was just in time. All that, and yet we were doomed from the beginning,” I finished. “I think the moral of the story is that I don’t know when to quit.”
“But you did quit,” Bianca pointed out. “You divorced.”
“Jeez,” I grunted. “You don’t have to get all serious and stuff. We got married in a drive-through ceremony, for cryin’ out loud. I just found reverse a little late, that’s all.”
We continued in silence for a moment, and I wondered if Bianca would feel the need to share a similar story. With none forthcoming, I tested the waters.
“You said you had a big ex, too,” I prompted. “There’s got to be an interesting story in there somewhere.”
Bianca stumbled, her foot disappearing into a puddle of surprising depth. Cold water splashed up, soaking her skirt and dousing my pants. She cursed with all the creativity of a sailor, which she was. Saved by the puddle, conversation ceased as we finally reached Casa Pădurarului—closed, of course—and wormed through the defenses of Brașov. The streets of the old city were deserted at this late hour in the rain, but I saw no less than three packs of stray dogs. Menacing, unkempt shapes darted over glistening brick, some melting into groups, others into shadow.
“How many goddamn dogs you got in this country?” I asked with that strange mixture of humor and irritability that comes with fatigue.
“Tens of thousands,” Bianca answered tiredly, hanging on my arm heavily. Her feet must have hurt something fierce in those high-heeled boots, but she endured without complaint. The night had become very cold, and we huddled together in clouds of our own puffing breath.
“Is real problem,” she continued. “When Ceaușescu was in control, he forced thousands of people to leave their farms and move into the city. Every peasant had a dog, but had to leave him in the country. Dogs are smart, though, and came to the city themselves. Also, Ceaușescu destroyed mucho houses with gardens for blocs, so even city dogs became Gypsies.”
“Well, at least that explains all the crap on the streets,” I said with completely artificial cheeriness.
The rain pressed harder and the skies grumbled louder. There is something inherently romantic about sharing a good umbrella, arm in arm with a beautiful companion, wandering deserted brick streets and centuries-old architecture. We crossed a series of old, pillared structures wrapped around a dark alcove. Lightning flashed, and suddenly a huge statue leapt out of the blackness at us.
I actually jumped back, forcing Bianca to stumble after me. Her deer-in-the-headlights stare revealed that she, too, had been surprised.
Lit by a strobe light of smoldering lightning, a gargantuan, angry man glared down with bronze eyes from atop a stone pedestal. His posture was immensely intimidating, with arms rearing back but ready to thrust forward, hammy fists clenched and ready to grapple—or grab a battle axe. Even his facial hair was combative, with flowing whiskers flaring to sharp points.
“What kind of a goddamn statue is that?” I challenged, panting.
“That rasclat is Andre Mureșanu,” Bianca said, shooting an accusing glare at the bronze. She straightened her skirt indignantly. “He was a poet.”
“A poet?” I cried. “He looks like the slaughterer of armies and children, for Christ’s sake.”
As thunder growled, I left Bianca the umbrella and uncertainly stepped into the small courtyard for a closer look. It was lush with overgrowing plants and unkempt hedges. The grass beneath my feet was swamped, and pulsed with the erratic winds.
“He was a warrior poet,” Bianca clarified, calling from the street. “Check the book in his hand.”
“Book my ass,” I snapped, gazing up at his aggressive stance. “He doesn’t want to read it—he wants to bludgeon me with it.”
“He was a revolutionary that was able to speak and write to the masses. So we say poet. This was two hundred years ago.”
“Conan the Librarian, indeed,” I muttered, rejoining her. Bookended by a violent dog fight and a violent revolutionary, any rapture we may have enjoyed was effectively crushed. But our fatigue was washed away by adrenaline, so we scampered hurriedly along to Strada Lâcramioarelor.
3
Slogging up the dark steps to the fourth floor after marching through hell and back—even meeting a demon poet—was just mean. Piti greeted us at the door with a weak ‘Aaaah’ before dropping melodramatically to the floor. There he moaned and rubbed his empty belly. We were quickly wrapped in sweater-vests and papuci of dubious fit, then led into the cozy kitchen for a steaming cup of Lucky’s tea.
Lucky had made a traditional Eastern European dish called sarmale. These were pickled cabbage rolls stuffed with minced pork, slices of smoked bacon, and chunks of peeled tomatoes. It was served with steaming mounds of polenta and actual soured cream. The sourness of the cream was explosive and delicious—actual soured cream!—and was completely unlike any of our processed ‘sour’ cream in the States. This simple dish vastly exceeded the sum of its own parts.
After dinner we played a card game called whist. As the man of the house, Piti insisted on teaching me the rules, preferring minimal linguistic assistance from his daughter. Fortunately it was not an overly complex game. Piti, Bianca, and I played, while Lucky watched and fussed over snacks and drinks. I came in last each of the first three games, but at least learned numbers in Romanian. Bianca jokingly mentioned that if I managed to hit exactly zero when someone else topped 500, the zero won. Using this strategy I won the next three games, at which point Piti threw down his cards and blurted something at Bianca in exasperation.
“He hates losing,” she snickered. “Careful, he’ll start cheating now.”
“What did he say?”
“He called you a typical American, because Americans always find a way to win.”
Struggling in the cramped kitchen, I stuck my big feet in the air. Pointing to the tiny slippers desperat
ely clinging to them—the American flag slippers were too hot for me to wear—I said, “Lucky papuci.”
Piti was so delighted that he poured us a special round of țuica. A dubious reward if ever there was one.
But then disaster struck: we ran out of wine. We had been drinking Piti’s homemade wine by the bottle—refilled Coca Cola two-liter bottles, that is. This was the strangest wine I had ever encountered, being somewhat sweet with a hint of natural effervescence. I could only describe it as happy, fruitless sangria.
“We can skip the wine,” I said helpfully. “We have alternatives.”
Piti grinned when he followed my gaze to the țuica bottle. But he sadly shook his head.
“Nu,” he said, tapping his temple. “Durere de cap.”
He then rose and gathered his jacket, leaving Bianca to translate.
“Durere de cap,” Bianca explained, “Means headache. Durere is pain, and cap means head. You know, you wear a cap on your head.”
“I see,” I said. “But we’re gonna have a hangover after all this wine anyway.”
“That’s the beauty of it!” she exclaimed. “This homemade wine is so honest and natural, with no tannins or artificiality, that you can drink yourself unconscious and not have durere de cap in the morning.”
I was a bit dubious over that claim, but let it be. Piti was about to leave for more wine, but instead gestured for us to join him. Bianca looked quite surprised, yet also a touch pleased, for some reason. Soon we three were descending the unlit steps. At the bottom of the stairwell we stood in the dark. Piti was busy doing something, but I couldn’t imagine what it was.
“I swear I just heard him open a manhole cover,” I commented, leaning into Bianca’s warmth.
“Please no tell me about any of your holes,” Bianca begged.
More sounds of movement resounded from the recess beneath the stairs, eventually capped by a click. A faint light shone up from a trapdoor in the concrete floor, which Bianca nudged me to enter. I hesitated. This had all the markings of a nasty twist in a horror movie.
Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3) Page 5